City-County reassessment fight approaches trial

By Mike Crowley

MEADVILLE TRIBUNE

A suit that pits the city of Meadville against Crawford County is headed to trial as pre-trial statements were filed in recent weeks by both sides.

The city’s attempt to force the county to conduct its first comprehensive property value reassessment since 1969 won’t begin as quickly as previously expected, however, due to a scheduling conflict involving Senior Judge Oliver J. Lobaugh of Venango County.

Originally planned for April 22, the start date was moved last week to May 11. The trial is expected to take up to three days.

“The actual process is in the hands of our solicitors,” said Eric Henry, chairman of the Crawford County Board of Commissioners. “They’ve been working a little more lately on things associated with it.”

City Manager Maryann Menanno was optimistic regarding the approaching trial. “We’re hopeful for a positive outcome to the situation,” Menanno said.

The question of what a positive outcome would look like, however, is at the heart of the lawsuit.

For the city, a positive outcome would require the county to conduct a new assessment and thus correct the inequities that have resulted from a tax system that “has become untethered from reality,” according to the pre-trial statement filed last month by the city.

“Many property owners in the County are paying too much in taxes while others pay too little,” the statement continued. “The only consistency in the County’s taxing system is an unfair and unconstitutional distribution of the tax burden to the County’s taxpayers.”

See TRIAL, Page A8

For this week’s Weekend Issue, we invite you to “Sound Of” on reassessments. When do you think Crawford County will do a full property reassessment?Your letters and Sound-Offs on this issue will appear on next Saturday’s Opinion & Comment page. For instructions on submitting correspondence, see PageA3.

Continued from Page A1 Both sides agree that state law does not establish any requirements for periodic county reassessments. Where they disagree concerns the Pennsylvania Constitution’s Uniformity Clause, which requires that “all taxes shall be uniform, upon the same class of subjects, within the territorial limits of the authority levying the tax.”

“Although the City asserts that the County’s last reassessment, conducted in 1969, has resulted in inequities,” lawyers representing the county wrote in their pre-trial statement, “the County maintains that its system continues to operate under established procedures, with assessments applied consistently to all taxpayers based on the data available.”

The statement goes on to point out that reassessment is costly and that “the County has carefully considered the costs, resources, and practical implications of such a project.”

When the two sides last met in court for a status conference last August, Lobaugh explored the possibility of settlement and offered to schedule a second status conference for potential mediation “if the parties are amenable.” No such status conference took place, perhaps because of the “all or nothing” nature of the reassessment question, in the words of city attorney Michael Musone. “Either a countywide reassessment gets done or it doesn’t,” Musone said at the time.

For more than 55 years, it hasn’t gotten done — at least in Crawford County. Of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties, only Franklin County continues to use older assessment values than Crawford County, having last conducted an assessment in 1961. In 1985, Crawford County values were updated by applying a flat multiplier of 2.7 across the board, but no actual assessment was conducted.

As Crawford County heads to court to prevent a reassessment of its 61,000 parcels, two neighboring counties are in the process of putting newly assessed property values into effect after having reached that point without going to court.

In 2022, Warren County paid $1.7 million to reassess its roughly 28,500 parcels for the first time since 1989, according to the Warren Times-Observer. Newly assessed property values took effect Jan. 1 in Warren County.

In conjunction with the new values, the county’s millage rate was reduced from 25 mills to 3.26 mills to ensure a “revenue-neutral” outcome, according to a statement from Warren County in November.

“My message would be to future boards of commissioners, ‘Don’t wait 36 years because it will happen again if you do,’” Warren County Commissioner Ken Klakamp said in the statement.

In Mercer County, new assessments will begin arriving in property owners’ mailboxes by the end of the month and will take effect in July, according to The Sharon Herald.

In 2023, Mercer County commissioners approved a $3.8 million bid to reassess the county’s 60,500 parcels for the first time since 1971. The process ultimately cost about $4.5 million, according to The Herald.

Mercer County’s millage rate won’t be adjusted until later this year, and officials at Tyler Technologies, the firm conducting the reassessment, already anticipate residents experiencing “sticker shock” upon receiving their new assessments.

“All property owners will have the ability to file a formal appeal with Mercer County after receiving that final value notice,” a company representative reminded county commissioners at a meeting earlier this month, according to The Herald.

Mike Crowley can be reached at (814) 724-6370 or by email at mcrowley@meadvilletribune. com.